TEHRAN, 26 March 2006 — Iran would fully go nuclear with the current Persian year which started simultaneously with spring on March 20, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said yesterday. “Our enemies try to prevent our scientific progress through widespread propaganda but inshaAllah (God willing) this (new) year will be the year when the Islamic Republic of Iran will fully avail itself of peaceful nuclear technology,” Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying by the news agency ISNA. In a meeting with visiting Syrian Vice President Farouk Al-Shara, Ahmadinejad said Iran’s use of peaceful nuclear energy will be to the benefit of the Islamic world and the “friends of Iran.”
Earlier yesterday, Iran thanked Russia and China for their stance in the ongoing dispute over Iran’s controversial nuclear program, state news agency IRNA reported. Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki thanked his Russian and Chinese counterparts by telephone for their “logical stance” and persistence to evaluate the issue within the International Atomic Energy Agency. Russia and China have so far refused plans for ultimatums or deadlines put by the United Nations Security Council on Iran for suspending all its uranium enrichment programs.
Mottaki reiterated Iran’s wish to find a broad-based agreement through negotiations and criticized any political approach in the UN Security Council toward the issue. Mottaki regarded “the nuclear arms of the Qods occupier regime (Israel) and the fact that it does not join the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a real threat in the Middle East,” state television said.
Meanwhile, Iran’s supreme leader accused Britain yesterday of conspiring to stop the country’s development through sabotage in the southern oil province of Khuzestan, the Tehran-based Arabic satellite news channel Al-Alam reported. “Enemies of Iran are plotting to stop Iran’s progress. The British forces in southern Iraq are plotting in Khuzestan province,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech to ethnic Arabs and Iranians in Dehlavieh in Khuzestan.
“The British occupation force in neighboring Basra and Ammara (Maysan) provinces in Iraq is extending its plots, as (the British) have shown animosity toward Iran over the past two centuries. But the Iranian people and government, especially the brave people of Khuzestan, will vanquish their conspiracy.” Khuzestan is home to a large community of ethnic minority Arabs and has been plagued by a wave of bombings over the past year, including car bombings last June and October, another attack in January and smaller attacks in February. There has been also several explosions and fires hitting oil facilities in the area, which have raised suspicions of sabotage.
